Creating an environment of scholarly engagement

With a mission of educating and empowering women, St. Catherine University is dedicated to giving its students the resources they need to become strong leaders. However, in order to become such leaders, women need to develop soft skills from experiences outside of the classroom. Skills like communication, collaboration and teamwork, initiative, and more can be introduced in the classroom but are only truly developed through real-world experiences. Indeed, employers look for tangible experiences that applicants can speak to. Understanding that need, Executive Vice President and Provost Anita Thomas, PhD, established an Academic Master Plan to combine the benefits of a liberal arts education with professional skills. 

The Office of Scholarly Engagement was created under the Academic Master Plan to make high-impact practices at the university more accessible to students through integration into the student learning experience. Comprised of five opportunities — the Antonian Honors Program, Competitive Fellowships, Community Work and Learning, Global Studies, and Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry - the office hopes to offer immersive learning opportunities for students to develop leadership skills. I spoke with D’Ann Urbaniak Lesch, the Strategic Director of the Office of Scholarly Engagement, to find out more about the office and what it is offering students.

D’ann told me that the purpose of the article is to be intentional about communicating and connecting in ways that encourages students to participate. This means positioning the five opportunities as something that would build and deepen their college experience. This led to two things: ensuring that the office was providing robust and meaningful experiences, and ensuring that students could communicate about these experiences after college. 

D’Ann stated that the purpose of the Office of Scholarly Engagement is to focus on the inclusion and accessibility of high-impact experiences for traditionally underserved students. They achieve this in three ways. Understanding that participation in such programs can be hindered by being a full-time student, the Office of Scholarly Engagement sought to integrate the experiences fully into the curriculum, with programs such as service-learning. Courses with service-learning components allow students to get involved in their communities in a way that doesn’t force them to take extra time. 

The office also makes research opportunities more accessible to students through programs like Antonian Honors Program, the Assistant Mentorship Program, and Summer Scholars, which integrate research into the experience itself. 

Finally, the office wanted to make studying abroad more accessible and cost-affordable by offering short-term options through semester-long programs and January-term programs. They also worked to allow students to have the opportunity to have global experiences in local contexts. By making opportunities more accessible to students, the Office of Scholarly Engagement hopes to give students concrete experiences that they can speak about in interviews, preparing them for the workforce.

In order to assess the barriers that prevent students from participating in such high-impact practices, the Office of Scholarly Engagement is holding several focus group sessions. The focus groups offer the opportunity to get informal student feedback on how the office can best support students and communicate about opportunities to them. The focus groups are on Monday March 22nd from 1:00pm-1:30pm, Tuesday March 23rd from 5:30pm-6:00pm, and Thursday March 25th from 1:00pm-1:30pm and are open to all students. If interested, please fill out the focus group sign up form to indicate which, if any, you can attend. 

At the end of the day,  the goal of the Office of Scholarly Engagement is to allow students to seize opportunities to build soft skills. It aims to dispel the belief that these opportunities aren’t for St. Kate’s students; they are, they just need to be taken advantage of. And the role of the Office of Scholarly Engagement is to help students do so.

To learn more about the Office of Scholarly Engagement and how to get involved in the opportunities that they provide, visit their website.